“Grief Is” my seventeenth ekphrastic response for National Poetry Month prompted by another painting showing the verve of Marcel Herms.

Grief Is

a merciless hunter
who lives in the forest of our hearts
Terrorises the birds and animals
who live there.

Grief goes out into the forest every morning
with a stick and net. One day, it throws its net
traps a female pigeon in it. Soon, thick and black clouds appear in the sky. It rains  Scared and shivering Grief looks for shelter and finds it under a huge oak tree. Rain and gust stop.. Skies clear, stars shine. Grief says loudly,

“If there is anyone on the tree, I seek shelter and food from them. I’m hungry and may faint any moment. Please save me.”

A pigeon that nests on the same tree worries that his wife has gone out and not come back. It prays to Gods that his wife not come to any harm in this gust and rain.

Pigeon agreed with his wife that
even at the cost of their own lives they must rescue those who seek shelter. Serve those in need with devotion. Don’t hate them.

Pigeon tells Grief, “Welcome to our modest home. Please let me know what I can do for you. Treat this as own home and feel free to command me.

Grief tells the pigeon that he suffers from cold and needs relief. Pigeon flies out, brings fire from somewhere and a lights a small fire with dry twigs asks Grief to warm itself.

Pigeon tells Grief, “Because of my past deeds, I’m born poor and unfortunate and dont have enough to feed myself. What is life if you can’t entertain a guest?

Pigeon tells  Grief to wait a while
it’ll have food.  Pigeon circles the fire,
Jumps into the fire it lit for the benefit of Grief

Grief tells itself, “Pigeon is a great soul, its shown me. I’ll give up all. Nothing, neither cold nor blaze nor gust, matter to me. I’ll fast and see my slow finish.”
It releases the female pigeon from its net.

Life without her husband is worse than death,
She leaps into the same fire.

Grief shuns worldly pleasures,
burns itself in the forest fire of our hearts

“She Sharts Us” my sixteenth ekphrastic response for National Poetry Month prompted by another painting showing the vivacity of Marcel Herms.

“She Sharts Us”

Received English

Bawling Bertha
Loud Lucy
Foghorn Fanny

First time we met
she shouted me over
with “On your own.
You’ll do for me!”

She can’t keep anything quiet.
First night together she said

“You going to use that
small thing to have sex with me?”
so loud the rest of the street
could hear.

Then its ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
out open windows
she insisted on.

Carerwauling Kate
Loud Hailer Hettie
Sharting Cheryl

I’m speaking normal volume
and she says ” Speak up. I cannot
hear you. You’ll have to learn
to speak up.”

Visiting her mothers house
is a shoutin match.
Her father is deaf.
No bloody wonder!

She’s not quiet, my wife.

Dialect

Bawlin’ Bertha
Loud Lucy
Foghorn Fanny

First linking up
she sharts us o’er
wi a “On thee oan.
Tha’ll do for me!”

She can’t keep nowt stum
first shag it were
‘Tha gonna ‘ave us
wi that mouse!’
so rest of street
could hear.

Then its ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
out open windows
she insisted on.

Carerwaulin’ Kate
Loud Hailer Hettie
Shartin’ Cheryl

Am speakin’ normal
an she’s sayin “A can’t
hear thee. Tha’ll av to learn
to speak up.”

Visitin’ her mothers house
is a shartin’ match.
Her father is deaf.
No bloody wonder!

She’s not quiet, our lass.

Our Rats Are Hounds

Seas full of icebergs
in the middle of the world.

Frozen spikes of water
are concrete and glass
that show the passage of light,

a shoulder, a leg, a skull,
that looks like a truck
that looks like a street
strides over and out
of reflection.

Beware windows keep faces
behind two panes

eyes, cheeks, teeth captured
when you glance through
a wrong glass at the outside.

From these travels
circumnavigation of my ocular orbs
I have discovered:

My chameleon is a wild goat
that neither eats or drinks
always mouth open
it lives on air.

My wild swine is an oxen,
brindled like fawns or does
My hedgehog is a porcupine
or a lion, white, big and strong.

My rhinoceros is a horse,
with a black head,
three horns on the brow,
sharp as swords.

My rats are hounds,
big as bears with six feet,
two claws on each foot.

My world is rounded
by my eyeballs,
I tack round their oceans
stop off at islands of light.

 

via Our Justification, by Paul Brookes

Monsters Are

excuses. Your work mate
next door neighbour

are far more scary. How imperfect
does a person need to be
to be called a monster?

Must we see them as inhuman,
not human but animal, an it

that invades our personal space
that sees us as things to be made

insecure, unsafe, violated.

Smash the glasses of our celebration
of life, cut their hands on our shattered
homeliness and friendship

bleed all over our complacency.

 

“The Mourners” my thirteenth ekphrastic response for National Poetry Month prompted by another painting showing the incisiveness of Marcel Herms.

The Mourners

expect a decent spread
after the service for the dead.

After her casket enters the flames
Her sisters tell tales, turn your head with names.

The sensation of looking at her life
celebrated on plate, fork and knife.

She was a feeder to all she welcomed
more tea than coffee, cream cakes and buns,

Plates piled with ham, pork, new potatoes,
Extended tables out of her small room grew

into her hallway laden with trifles,
Éclairs, gateaux, vienettas, profiteroles,

And yet with age she ate less and less,
lost weight and interest in all else

But meticulously recorded appointments
with doctors, opticians and her common sense

That said they were all wrong and must be dense
unable to diagnose her persistent aches and pains.

She sliced and diced them into manageable portions
The mourners digest her life and its storied motions

https://visualverse.org/submissions/stylite/

“The Owl Guide” my twelfth ekphrastic response for National Poetry Month prompted by another painting showing the vibrancy of Marcel Herms.

The Owl Guide

As you lie in that hospital bed unconscious
In a maybe
What more can you do,
What more should you have done

As a young girl, excited and unaccustomed to city-ways, gallop your dads milk horse
away from your white home,
through downtown Sunderland streets
where this morning it trotted
Dads milkcart rattle on a milkround.

Folk scatter, run scared.
A bobby captures your reins.
Arrested and thrown in prison
with the rapists, killers and paedophiles.

sob yourself to sleep.
Shortly after midnight awake
to flap, flap flap near the door,

stood wide open. You softly
step out, close the door behind you.

See an owl,
perched on a wooden fence,

who awaits your escape.
The owl flies in front of  you,
guides you past bobbies,

through dark streets, till you come
to a saddled horse and a bundle of fresh clothes.

You mount, the owl pulls the horses head
Towards the white dairy farm

then leaves, as it must as the owl

in a maybe
Is your future daughter who dies before you do.
What more can you do.
What more should you have done.

via Our Small Beginning, a poem …. and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

A New Feather

The writer searches for the perfect quill
to make him an author of genius,
his work lauded,
taught in schools
only possession
of this object
will make
the work great.

A boy with headdress and quiver
of feathered arrows wants
a magical feather to add
to a shaft
to make strangers
his friends and play
Cowboys and Indians
with him.

The carpenter wants a fine pillow
stuffed with the softest
gentlest down
to complete
his fabulous carved bed
made of the rarest wood.

The comedian wants the funniest
feather to tickle his audience
into laughter
that will last
long after
he dies.

The cat wants the meat under
the feather, warm
and tender,
succulent
in its jaws.

The dog wants his master
to have the bird
his master has killed
and he retrieves,
for his master to be happy
and give him treats,
maybe even a cooked morsel,
once the bird is plucked
and cooked.

The bird waits for his new feathers
after his moult
to flatter a female,
make him handsome,
nudge her with his display
so she will bear
his children.